Tennessee Williams women stole the stage at 8th annual fest

Sold-out houses, standing ovations, risky plays about women on the edge clawing their way to survival — that was the eighth annual Provincetown Tennessee Williams Theater Festival.

Lynda Sturner & Rob Phelps

Sold-out houses, standing ovations, risky plays about women on the edge clawing their way to survival — that was the eighth annual Tennessee William’s Theater Festival.

This year’s event, which took over most of the larger performance spaces in town and spilled into the streets early last Thursday morning and late into Sunday night, brought a powerhouse of actors with the extraordinary ability to transform themselves into characters both outrageous and ordinary. The directors brought fresh visions and new insights to classics and recently unearthed gems of 20th century plays, most by Williams with two by women whose work Williams admired — Jane Bowles and Gertrude Stein.

True to the 2013 festival’s title, “Tennessee Williams and Women: 50 Percent Illusion,” the spotlight never left the ladies on stage, enchantingly forcing audiences to take a weekend-long look at what Williams’ women are all about. These are desperate women who do whatever it takes to survive. They’re seemingly fragile creatures with the power to destroy. They’re women looking for a place called home even when home is an illusion, a fantasy woven in cheap boarding houses and whiskey nights. And, despite their being written to play in long-forgotten places from another century, we root for and relate to every one of these women understanding all too well that every single one of them could have been you or me, or, God forbid, actually was once you or me or is just two pay checks away from being you or me.

But as awful as their situations might be, these women are as tough as they are compassionate. We are left with an odd hope that if things ever got so bad in our own lives, we could only hope to be as strong and full of grace as these ladies.

The festival turned practically all of Provincetown into a stage. The players created theater in all kinds of places, from a traditional proscenium venue to the pool deck of the Boatslip. They took risks, stringing together short plays in one occasion, adding tap dancers, presenting only the second act in another and trying to make sense out of Gertrude Stein. While they may not always have been 100 percent successful, ideas always emerged through their experiments as every one worked hard to find new ways to deepen the understanding of Williams and wonder at his enduring relevance to our lives.

The South African company Artscape and Abrahamse-Meyer Productions returned with a fully staged production of last year’s sleeper hit, “Kingdom of Earth.” Moving from more of a workshop staging in the basement of the VFW Hall last year to The Provincetown Theater, with its new state-of-the-art sound and lighting equipment, the difference a year in development made to this piece, previously acted with world-class performances but now deepened and staged, was astonishing.

The play crackles with doom and comic drama, pitting its characters against a flood, a dysfunctional family with secrets and a new bride desperate for the safety of home. Kudos to Anthea Thompson playing Myrtle, Marcel Meyer as Chicken and Nicholas Dallas as Lot for giving us such complex, nuanced performances. When Thompson, saving herself from the rising floodwaters, must say goodbye to her dying husband — who before they married failed to mention he was dying of tuberculosis and liked to dress up in his mother’s clothing — the actress delivers one of the revelatory moments that strip bare the heart and soul of the Williams woman. She stops briefly and looks back at him with love and longing for a better life — a better world — and even a touch of forgiveness, but then she does what she must to save herself. It takes less than a few seconds and it breaks our hearts.

The group from South Africa brought another fully staged production to the festival this year with “The Milk Train Doesn’t Stop Here Anymore.” Meyer returns to the stage to play the Angel of Death, a dashing young man a little past his prime whose career cannot be quite called “gigolo” but teeters in that direction. The Angel’s job is to “help” women of a certain age and wealth put their estates in order before his final date with them. The lady in question here, brilliantly played by Jennifer Steyn as Flora Goforth, gives him one tough run for her money. This is perhaps Williams’ bitchiest play (Noel Coward, his arch wit fully unleashed, was cast as Goforth’s best frenemy, The Witch of Capri, in the movie version). But ultimately it’s a simple allegory of what we all must do to keep a roof over our heads in this world. And picking up on the allegorical nature of the drama, the South African troupe deftly staged the show kabuki-style as if to remind us to pay attention to the characters as symbols for what’s most important in everyone’s lives, from the outrageous to the ordinary.

In “Slapstick Tragedy: The Mutilated,” Romanian-born director Cosmin Chivu brilliantly paired Andy Warhol-star Penny Arcade with John Water’s favorite Mink Stole in this tale told in a flophouse and down-and-out bar. Usually known for playing their own avant-garde characters, Arcade and Stole proved their acting mettle transforming into Celeste and Trinket, a couple of iconic Williams women scratching at each other’s eyes and the world to survive, comically and desperately seeking love and home. Composer and trumpet-player Jesse Selengut’s choral and Dixieland brass arrangements wound in and around the story enhancing the production with style and wit, creating a fable.

Director Robert Chevara artfully combined three early Williams plays — “Cairo, Shanghai, Bombay,” “At Liberty” and “Curtains for the Gentleman’’ — to create a wondrous abstract burlesque show, with dancers capturing the depression and life on the stage.

“Cat On a Hot Tin Roof,” imaginatively directed by Elizabeth Falk,” brought Broadway stars and real-life husband-and-wife team Kier Dullea and Mia Dillon, as on stage spouses Big Daddy and Big Mama, from Wellfleet Harbor Actors Theater, where the production was developed earlier this month, to Provincetown Town Hall. This intense drama with the quintessential Williams woman, Maggie the Cat, desperate to save her marriage and future inheritance, came alive with a cast who understood and delightfully delivered the poetry of Williams’ lyrical language.

The excellent and unusual “Neo-Benshi Street Car,” a live film voice-over created by Roxi Power, who artfully imposed her words upon excerpts from the movie, opened up a new way of seeing the characters in Williams’ “Street Car Named Desire.” Based on a Japanese tradition of narration over silent films, Powers plays with drag, gender identity and poetry.

One of the highlights of the festival was curator and founder David Kaplan’s direction of a Jane Bowles’ “In the Summer House.” A close friend and fellow writer who Williams greatly admired, Bowles planted some seeds in her play that appear in later Williams plays. Kaplan set his production on the sun-dappled harbor-side deck of the Boatslip resort, adding a new dimension and depth. Actors used the entire space, playing on stairs, guestroom balconies, pool-side furniture and even in the pool itself. (Luckily for the pool-hoppers, the weekend turned out to be sunny and warm for late September.)

Starting with Act II and adding only a scene at the end from Act I, Kaplan succeeded in creating a piece that could stand alone. Although many theatergoers commented after the show that they didn’t know there was another act in the play, Kaplan plans to bring both acts to next year’s festival and perform them in repertory.

Friendship is the theme of next year’s festival, which comes to Provincetown Sept.24-28, 2014, and is being called “Tennessee Williams and his Circle of Friends.” Williams’ friends, especially those from New York City, Italy, Tangier, Key West and Provincetown, included poets, painters, essayists and novelists. Along with Williams and Bowles’ plays, shows include works by Yukio Mishima, James Purdy, Carson McCullers, William Inge and Gore Vidal.